And… Again?

Man, I really did set myself up nicely here.

The previous post on this blog is about continuing to just start again (and again and again) after a failure. More specifically, it’s about how I have tried and failed for years to keep a blog, any blog, going. But it’s also about how I was finally in a place where I thought my latest attempt might actually be successful. It’s, unsurprisingly considering the content, the very first post on this blog.

It’s also the only post on this blog.

And it was written over two years ago.

But wait, it gets better. In the meantime, I started yet another blog, about a year after this one. I am happy to report, though, that that one did actually last way longer than one post. I think I got to, like, four whole posts with that one before my self-doubt caught up with me and I just faded from reality like Homer into the bushes.

And I feel like my life has just consisted of that repeating pattern: start strong and optimistic and capable…then fizzle out, sooner rather than later. Sometimes even immediately. That’s held for school years when I was younger, college semesters as I got older, jobs, relationships, routines, projects, hobbies, passions, goals. And I get losing focus and drive for boring things, things not of your choosing, the often drab requirements of basic existence. But my own stuff? The things I’m really into that give me joy and satisfaction? Why can I never manage to do any of that consistently either?

I was diagnosed with clinical depression as a child (also referred to as major depression or major depressive disorder), and depression can and will absolutely rob you of the desire and ability to do literally anything at times. But the vast majority of my life, the desire to do something hasn’t been the issue. The issue is that, despite the desire, I just can’t seem to actually do the thing.

And it’s clearly not for lack of trying, as evidenced by my, in the end, abysmal blogging record. And it’s not for lack of innate ability either. I’ve generally had the intelligence and knowledge and talent to successfully do essentially whatever I wanted. People have always been so full of praise for me, and so incredibly encouraging and supportive of me throughout my life. My parents, teachers, professors, bosses, other professionals in various capacities, friends, strangers even. Yet I’ve never been able to live up to any of those expectations and assumptions of what I would “do” with my life, who I would “become.” I just can’t ever seem to get there from here.

Welp. Turns out there’s a reason for that.

And its name is ADHD.

When my husband suggested that I may have undiagnosed ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (one of the most detrimentally inaccurate names to ever be thought up, by the way), shortly before Thanksgiving last fall, I thought it was the single most preposterous thing to ever come out of the man’s mouth. I don’t struggle with attention and hyperactivity and impulsivity. I just struggle with motivation and consistency and self-esteem and anger management and organization and have terrible decision-making and time- and money-management skills. Those aren’t related. Like, at all.

…right?

But my husband was actually diagnosed with ADHD the year prior (apparently we tend to unknowingly find each other in the wild), and we celebrated our 13th anniversary this year, making him extremely well-informed, if not somewhat of an actual expert, on both ADHD and me. So I decided to humor him and look into it.

And that’s when shit got real, friends.

Have you ever read something with increasing confusion and a slight sense of panic because it seems to quite clearly be something you wrote about your personal life experiences, yet you don’t actually remember writing it, and it’s attributed to a total stranger? If so, you probably know you can only do that so many times about a particular topic before coincidence is no longer a plausible explanation (and if you haven’t experienced that, just know it’s exactly as weird and unsettling as it sounds). First time’s a fluke, second time’s a coincidence, third time’s a pattern and all that.

And as the confusion and panic reach a crescendo, suddenly your brain is all popcorn kernels at the point of no return and connections between symptoms of ADHD in girls and women and your behavior and experiences over the entirety of your existence start relentlessly popping off all over the damn place. And you slowly but somehow also very, very quickly realize…

You have ADHD.

Or, I mean. That’s what might happen if said topic you were reading about was ADHD. And you were a woman. Or a girl. And, you know, actually had it.

Anyway.

Fortunately, I had recently gone back to therapy after taking time off starting at the beginning of 2020, because my timing is nothing if not impeccable. So in what turns out is classic ADHD fashion, I went to my next therapy appointment armed to the teeth with evidence for why I was convinced I had ADHD. But, in yet another display of apparently classic ADHD behavior, I was also utterly convinced I was completely full of shit and he would see right through my absurd and pathetic attempt at explaining away my severe adulting inadequacies.

However, my therapist, who I had done intensive weekly sessions with from summer 2018 to the end of 2019, and who constitutes the other extremely well-informed, if not somewhat of an actual expert, on me, sat and listened to my entire spiel without saying much, per his usual. And when I finally came up for air, he was basically just all, yep, that’s exactly it.

It was fucking surreal.

And also an extremely good illustration of how spectacularly many girls and women with ADHD mask our symptoms and struggles without even realizing it, and, because of that subconscious Herculean effort, never get recognized as having ADHD. My therapist is a clinical psychologist with a doctorate and over 30 years’ of experience, yet until I laid it all out for him, he didn’t pick up on it at all. Once I did, though, it was clear as day to him. And remember how I was diagnosed with depression as a child? Things were so bad for me, I was hospitalized for it eventually at age 11. I saw and was assessed by so many specialists during that time, but as my current psychiatric nurse practitioner put it, it was just slightly too early in the 90’s for me to have had a more realistic chance of being properly diagnosed.

Alas.

But hey, a proper ADHD diagnosis at age 40 is infinitely better than a proper ADHD diagnosis never, right?

Said diagnosis was then further confirmed by both a clinical psychologist with expertise in assessing and diagnosing adult ADHD, and my phenomenal psychiatric nurse practitioner, who has slogged through the unbelievably muddy trenches of trialing medication with me for most of the past year. And just when I was on the verge of giving up, she suggested trying one more, and…

It was a success. And the sole reason you are all hearing from me now.

So here we are.

Again.

Will it be the final “again,” though?

Beats the hell out of me.

But at least the odds are better now.